History and Mission

Building on earlier efforts to stimulate business history in Canada, a small group of historians, archivists, and business people has been formed to create a new business history organization. This new organization has been called the Canadian Business History Association – l’association canadienne pour l’histoire des affaires (CBHA/ACHA). The group shares the conviction that our business heritage is an integral part of Canadian history and that this heritage cannot be preserved without a strong academic/business partnership.

The CBHA/ACHA believes it is important for businesses to organize and open their archives by engendering a respect for the role of scholarship in helping to understand the social significance of commerce. Despite its long historical and economics traditions, attempts of late to further Canadian history have remained small and localized. Canada is too large and diverse a country to cultivate integrated interdisciplinary, regional, and ethnic forums for the study of business history without a partnership with the business community.

The CBHA/ACHA mission is to establish a not-for-profit association that provides a forum for archivists, historians, managers, management scholars, and the public to further the historical study of Canadian business and how that history relates to other countries.

The CBHA/ACHA Objectives include:

Build a diverse organization of members with an interest in Canadian business history and that reflects the broad diversity of the country.

Substantially increasing the amount and quality of Canadian business history.

Improving the quality of, and gaining access to, commercial archival materials, and to provide a central site to make sources accessible to a broad audience.

Increasing the amount of business history taught at Canadian business schools and in history departments.

Helping encourage and supervise more corporate histories within a professional approach.

Increasing the number of companies that include history as a part of their corporate orientations.

Making Canadian business history accessible to the general public.

Supporting academic research and publication in Canadian business history.

Developing outreach and strong links with business and academic communities.